


Hide and Seek

by Cousin Shelley (CousinShelley)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loneliness, Minor Character Death, Other, Sea Monsters, Violence, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25407910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/pseuds/Cousin%20Shelley
Summary: BlueBlack is supposed to kill a human to become a proper sea monster, then find a mate, procreate, and die. He's decided to follow his own path instead.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 15
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Hide and Seek

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badritual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/gifts).



He didn’t know words like _mother_ or _man_ or _woman_ or _tree._ He knew what these things were, of course, but not by the words humans called them. He didn’t even have a name by human standards, but others of his kind had wrapped their arms with his to speak to him before they’d gone in search of new homes. Their skin flashed a mottled pattern of blue and black, and he knew that was what he was called.

He didn’t know words but he knew _things_ and he felt things as deep as the muddy bottom of the lagoon where he’d come to live to await the day of his ascendance. On that day he’d drag one of the four-armed creatures from the shore and rend them limb from limb, turning the water thick and red. 

Only then could he take his rightful place in the hierarchy of his kind. After that, he wouldn’t be shunned by the others if he went back to the sea, and he could take a mate. Not that it would necessarily improve his life. It would still be a solitary one until he found a willing mate, and then if he escaped her with his life, he would go off alone and quickly die. He’d been born knowing this was what he was supposed to do. 

He envied the females and their long lives. How unfair was it that only they got to go on killing and mating and killing again while his sole purpose was to spawn?

He’d been in the lagoon a few years. His ascendance was long overdue. 

BlueBlack didn’t want to die, so he didn’t want to find a mate. And he’d never wanted to tear apart the strange and interesting four-armed creatures who clomped around awkwardly on two of them outside the water. He wanted to play their games. Their games looked _fun._

The first time he’d watched the smallest ones hurrying around on two of their arms, making sweet, high-pitched sounds and turning the air rich with their happiness, so rich he thought he could feel it settle on his skin like cool rain, he’d wanted to be a part of that. He paid close attention and learned their games. He thought and planned and knew he’d be _so good_ at what they were doing. 

He liked the game where one turned away while the others scrambled into places they thought no one could see them. The one left would sneak and shout and find them, all of them breaking out into high-pitched squeals he tried to mimic but couldn’t. When it was dark and no creatures could see him, he crawled onto the land and practiced. 

He found a wide tree and stretched his body up and down it. He pressed himself against the trunk, took on its shape, let his arms stretch out and up to match the bends of the branches, concealing him from anyone looking for him on the other side. He felt he’d mastered the game, and each day waited for small ones to come back so he could surprise them. 

Three of them came, and one of them had not just four arms like the others but six, with two shorter black ones that dangled from each side of her head. One of the others kept pulling them. Surely this one with her extra arms could speak to him and understand, so he slid from the water and wrapped an arm around hers. He flashed _BlueBlack_ at her to introduce himself and asked if he could join them.

The sound she made wasn’t the sweet high-pitched one he was hoping for. 

Why didn’t she understand? Was it because she only had six arms? That was two more than the others. They did hang limply and blow strangely in the breeze, though. Maybe there was something wrong with her. He tried to pull her toward the tree so he could help her understand. 

The others made horrible, shrill sounds that hurt his head, not like soft sweet rains but rocks thrown from the shore. He let go of the six-armed dumb thing and slid back into the safe water. 

After that, small ones rarely came, and when they did, he stayed hidden, only his eyes breaking the surface at a long distance to watch them and wish, his skin mottling gray green that he wouldn’t be accepted. 

Bigger ones came and threw things into the water, strings with shiny metal hooks on the end that plucked fish into the air, their happiness at this kind of like the small ones when they played. A few times he got bold and tossed a fish at them to be helpful, but instead of thanking him or being kind they ran away. 

One day a woman with skin the shade of tree bark came to the edge of the water. She didn’t try to hook a fish, and there was no one for her to play hiding games with. She stared at the lagoon, and he wondered for an excited moment if she could be looking for him. 

He rose up from the water, lifting two of his arms and wriggling them, and wondered if he wrapped them around her arms whether she might be someone who could speak to him. 

She made a terrible noise, though not as bad as the small ones, so he dropped into the water again. But she stayed and kept peering in his direction. Why didn’t she run?

She unbuttoned the covering she wore, baring herself and pushing her round breasts out as if in some kind of offering. 

He rose out of the water as far as he had before, and realized for the first time he seemed to make one of them happy. The air thickened and settled on his skin, and almost like magic he sensed what kind of game she wanted to play. With _him!_ He hadn’t even touched her, yet they understood each other. 

He wrapped two of his arms around her large breasts, gripped them tightly, and attached tentacles to her protruding nipples. The noises she made were much more pleasing than the others had made when he’d tried to play with them. He slid one long arm into the tight covering around the bottom of her body and pressed into the warmth between her legs. It was as slick as his own skin. 

The woman was so happy as he lifted her by her arms and held her aloft while he plunged in and out. She squirmed and struggled in his grip, but didn’t really try to make him let go. He still liked the hiding game best and hoped she’d play that with him afterward. But it was thrilling to get to play anything at all, and make someone so happy. 

More came after that: people with different bodies, different colors, shapes and sizes, and they all liked the same game. Sometimes one would come who didn’t seem to know it and they’d run away when he rose dripping from the water, but he usually caught them and showed them how fun it could be. Most didn’t run, with some already removing their clothing before he’d even shown himself.

Many shouted and threw rocks into the water to get his attention, and every time he hoped for the hiding game or one like it he hadn’t learned yet. And every time, he was a little more disappointed. 

He grew tired of lifting these creatures by their ridiculously small number of arms and playing their games, plunging into them in every place an arm would fit, pulling on all their parts that stuck out and he could grip. They would be so happy for a time, but they didn’t really care about making him happy or playing any games he wanted. They didn’t see or hear him, not really. They used him, and then they would leave him alone again.

He’d just played with a man and a woman who’d come together, and instead of playing anything else with him when he’d finished their game, they’d twisted around each other and played again without him, right in front of him. He waited patiently, but when they were finished, they didn’t even glance backward to see him waiting in the water. 

Not for the first time, he thought about how easy it would have been to tear them apart so he could ascend and leave this place. He could have done it hundreds of times, and the more they turned their backs on him, the more appealing the idea became. He wouldn’t have to take a mate and let his life end, but at least he wouldn’t be shunned by his own kind once he’d taken that step. And he could leave these selfish and strange four-armed creatures behind. He’d never get to play good games with them, but at least he wouldn’t be disappointed each time one showed up.

BlueBlack was trying to rest and think about whether he should leave when a stabbing pain flared in one of his arms. A hook snared him, a wriggling worm threaded over most of the shiny metal.

Someone pulled it, the pain worsening with each tug. He grabbed the line it was tied to and tore it all the way free. 

One of them thought to hook _him_ and pull him up so they could play their game? And no doubt, like all the others, they would leave him in the end. 

His skin mottled blue, black, purple, gray, brown. It mottled red. He would not play their games anymore. It was time for him to ascend after all, and leave. 

He followed the line under the water until he was near shore, then burst through the surface, arms already reaching for the one who’d thought to hook him _like a common fish._

The man dropped the pole in his hands and stepped backward, but BlueBlack caught all four of his arms and hoisted him up. The man’s shout disappeared beneath the arm he wrapped around the man’s face to silence him. 

He saw what he would do in his imagination to speak it to the man, for all the good it would do. He pictured how he’d hold him tight, pull one arm at a time until it tore free, blood falling like rain all around him in the water. Then the arm around his mouth would twist, and he’d let the head drop like all the stones these creatures had thrown into the lagoon to get his attention. 

The image of himself, arms running red with blood and waving pieces of this man in the air suddenly pleased him as much as any hiding games or melodic laughter might have, so he squeezed, tightening all his arms at once, and pulled the man close so he could look into his eyes and make sure the man understood his anger even if he couldn’t understand his language. 

The man’s eyes were wide, terrified, acrid fear making BlueBlack’s skin ripple. Tears ran down the man’s cheeks, dripping over the coiled arm around his mouth. He sobbed behind the tentacles holding his lips together, his limbs trembling where they were held out from his body. 

And BlueBlack understood his fear, as if they were speaking. The man had seen what he was going to do, had seen his own limbs torn free, blood darkening the water. He’d _heard_ and understood the way BlueBlack thought the small one with the limp arms hanging from the sides of her head should have, but didn’t. 

And BlueBlack, in kind, heard his terror and understood the hook had been an accident. He hadn’t come to use him like the others. He was hungry. He’d wanted to pluck a fish into the air, and nothing more. 

This was a bad game. He no longer wanted to ascend. 

He set the man down upon the shore and turned to slide back into the water, perhaps never to come out again. 

_“Wait!”_

He didn’t know whether the man called for help, or if he merely wailed from fright. But something in the sound made him turn. The man stood at the water’s edge, one hand outstretched toward him. Why didn’t he run when he knew what had almost happened?

BlueBlack approached him, gliding through the water, only his eyes visible. The man didn’t move, but kept his hand held out, his face still damp with tears but his eyes not as wide, not as scared. 

BlueBlack lifted a tentacled arm slowly from the water and more gently than he’d ever done with another human, wrapped it around the outstretched hand. And they _shared._

Akio was his human name, and also he would be called BlueYellow because of the mottled colors that appeared on BlueBlack’s skin when they touched. He understood so much that when he had to leave, laden with the fish BlueBlack caught for him, there was no fear that he wouldn’t return. 

Akio came back the next day and the next, and laughed when BlueBlack tossed fish at him, once slapping him in the forehead with a large one, and lobbed back the flat rocks Akio skipped across the calm water. Akio also told him stories, mostly happy ones. But he also told of the man his mother had trusted, one she should not have trusted, and who now could cause them to have nowhere to sleep and little food to eat aside from the fish Akio brought home from the lagoon

BlueBlack did not like this man because he scared Akio and made him sad. He didn’t like the thought of anyone hurting him. When Akio spoke of the man, BlueBlack thought of ascending, and water thick with blood. Akio stared at him a long time. No one had ever looked at BlueBlack quite so carefully. No one had ever really wanted to see him as he was. Akio saw him, and understood. 

The day he would ascend was overcast, the sky threatening rain and the breeze slow and sweet. Akio brought the bad man to show him the lagoon, and when the man grabbed Akio’s arm, tossed his pole and sack away, and shouted about how ridiculous he was to waste his time, BlueBlack rose from the water and fell upon him. If only his fellow hatchlings could see him, he thought. See how great and terrifying he could truly be. He dragged broken sounds from the man as he pulled at his arms and twisted one free. 

Akio covered his ears with his hands and tucked his forehead against his knees. BlueBlack squeezed his arm around the bad man’s mouth to silence him, and felt bone crack under the pressure. Blood from the torn arm splashed against BlueBlack’s skin and splattered into the water as if it were poured from a pitcher with a shaky hand.

He liked this red game more than he’d imagined, liked the sounds and the vibrations and the sticky dark clouds floating around him. Even though the man stopped screaming, Akio still held his hands over his ears, so the game needed to be finished. He pounded the monster against the rocks on the far shore until he stopped making even soft noises. Then he plunged the raw remains beneath the surface and tore it into chum.

Akio could go home without fear, and give the happy news to his mother that she need not fear the bad man again, either. There would also be a bounty for their supper thanks to the stringy pink bits floating in the water that bobbed and twitched as fish fed on them. He caught a dozen at once and stuffed them into Akio’s sack.

Akio sat on the ground and looked up at him with wet eyes, but he reached out his hand. He sighed when tentacles wriggled over his skin. He understood everything, as always, and smiled and said _thank you,_ and as he had so many times since the first day they’d met he called BlueBlack _friend._

BlueBlack could go to the open water now, if he chose to. He wouldn’t be shunned, but would be regarded as a prince of his kind. He had ascended at last. 

* * *

BlueBlack loved this game, so much more than the warm slick ones he’d played for so long and the sticky red one he’d only played once. With so much practice, day after day, he was as good at it as he’d once imagined he could be. 

He stretched himself along a thick trunk, coiled his arms around the branches, and mottled his skin brown and green. 

Akio’s voice floated to him on the breeze. “Eighteen . . . nineteen . . . twenty. Ready or not, here I come.”

BlueBlack held as still as he could so the shuddering of leaves wouldn’t give him away. Then he closed his eyes and waited to be found. 

  
  
  



End file.
